in the back room where we store our blades. I do not want to have my blades in my car or in my apartment, because I know that it would scare some people. Tom warned me about it. It is important not to scare people. So I leave all my fencing gear at Tom and Lucia’s, and everyone knows that the left-hand-but-two slot is mine and so is the left-hand-but-two peg on the other wall and my mask has its own pigeonhole in the mask storage.
First I do my stretches. I am careful to do all the stretches; Lucia says I am an example to the others.
Don, for instance, rarely does all his stretches, and he is always putting his back out or pulling a muscle.
Then he sits on the side and complains. I am not as good as he is, but I do not get hurt because I neglect the rules. I wish he would follow the rules because I am sad when a friend gets hurt.
When I have stretched my arms, my shoulders, my back, my legs, my feet, I go to the back room and put on my leather jacket with the sleeves cut off at the elbow and my steel gorget. The weight of the gorget around my neck feels good. I take down my mask, with my gloves folded inside, and put the gloves in my pocket for now. My épée and rapier are in the rack; I tuck the mask under one arm and take them out carefully.
Don comes in, rushed and sweating as usual, his face red. “Hi, Lou,” he says. I say hi and step back so he can get his blade from the rack. He is normal and could carry his épée in his car if he wanted without scaring people, but he forgets things. He was always having to borrow someone else’s, and finally Tom told him to leave his own here.
I go outside. Marjory isn’t here yet. Cindy and Lucia are lining up with epees; Max is putting on his steel helmet. I don’t think I would like the steel helmet; it would be too loud when someone hit it. Max laughed when I told him that and said I could always wear earplugs, but I hate earplugs. They make me feel as if I have a bad cold. It’s strange, because I actually like wearing a blindfold. I used to wear one a lot when I was younger, pretending I was blind. I could understand voices a little better that way. But feeling my ears stuffed up doesn’t help me see better.
Don swaggers out, épée tucked under his arm, buttoning his fancy leather doublet. Sometimes I wish I had one like that, but I think I do better with plain things.
“Did you stretch?” Lucia asks him.
He shrugs. “Enough.”
She shrugs back. “Your pain,” she says. She and Cindy start fencing. I like to watch them and try to figure out what they’re doing. It’s all so fast I have trouble following it, but so do normal people.
“Hi, Lou,” Marjory says, from behind me, I feel warm and light, as if there were less gravity. For a moment I squeeze my eyes shut. She is beautiful, but it is hard to look at her.
“Hi, Marjory,” I say, and turn around. She is smiling at me. Her face is shiny. That used to bother me, when people were very happy and their faces got shiny, because angry people also get shiny faces and I could not be sure which it was. My parents tried to show me the difference, with the position of eyebrows and so on, but I finally figured out that the best way to tell was the outside corners of the eyes.
Marjory’s shiny face is a happy face. She is happy to see me, and I am happy to see her.
I worry about a lot of things, though, when I think about Marjory. Is autism contagious? Can she catch it from me? She won’t like it if she does. I know it’s not supposed to be catching, but they say if you hang around with a group of people, you’ll start thinking like them. If she hangs around me, will she think like me? I don’t want that to happen to her. If she were born like me it would be fine, but someone like her shouldn’t become like me. I don’t think it will happen, but I would feel guilty if it did. Sometimes this makes me